It is to laugh

From the "On Faith" section of the Washington Post/Newsweek site:

Americans Want Movies with Morals, Christian Values

As we will see during Sunday's Academy Awards, last year was no exception. Six of the most successful movies of the year -- "Wall-E," "Iron Man," "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," "Prince Caspian," "Gran Torino," and "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" -- contained strong redemptive content with positive Christian references.

Not only did moviegoers prefer heroic movies with very strong moral virtues, they also rejected movies with anti-Christian, secular, nihilistic, and atheist content like "Religulous," "Adam Resurrected," "Save Me," "Wanted," "Hounddog," "Bloodline," "Hamlet 2," "The Love Guru," "Stop-Loss," and "Saw V."

Hold everything. First of all...

My own bad feeling about Bill Maher aside, Religulous was in profit as of its opening weekend.

Hamlet 2, I think had that beat by being in profit before it even opened (it sold at Sundance for a lot of money).

Wanted has made $134,294,280 and a sequel is being prepared.

And oh yes...Saw V. Even as the least financially (and, frankly, creatively) successful film in the Saw series to date, it has made almost 10 times its budget, in theaters alone.

Now, a couple of these were, undeniably, bombs. The Love Guru just swept the Razzies, and fell far short at the box office. Like most people, I haven't seen it, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that was all because it wasn't very funny, not because it had "anti-Christian, secular, nihilistic, and atheist content."

On the other hand, while it's true Stop-Loss was a bomb financially, it got mostly good reviews---and deserved them. It's a very well-made film. It didn't lose out at the box office because it was nihilistic or any of the rest of those things, I believe. But rather because the country has a terrific sense of Iraq fatigue.

Some of those other movies it's not fair to say were "rejected" by the public because the public never got a chance to see them. I don't think Adam Resurrected or Bloodline were even released in this country, and Save Me only received limited release, but got good reviews.

Good or bad, Hounddog never got past its rep as the "movie where Dakota Fanning gets raped," so we'll likely never know if moviegoers would've "rejected" it if it hadn't starred The World's Child Star.

But I do know this: I hope to god, if I ever do manage to get any of my movies made, please let the public reject them...like they did Saw V.